Throughout the month of Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashanah, I will be sharing daily reflections to help each of us prepare for the upcoming High Holy Day Season. I hope these thoughts inspire each of us to make time, find the energy and initiate some passion as we reflect and examine this past year, in preparation for the year to come. And please, feel free to check out Makom NY: A New Kind of Jewish Community, and if you don't have a place for the upcoming High Holy Day Season, please join us! You are welcome!

As a rabbi, it seems I am the obvious person to have conversations with individuals about faith. Sometimes the conversations are about seeking faith. Sometimes I hear of people who have lost faith. And sometimes, I learn of people who have found faith.

In the Jewish tradition, the concept of faith is known as emunah. We also define emunah as belief. Sometimes, we use the word faith generically: I have faith you can succeed; I have faith that I can get through this day. However, in Judaism, emunah is deeper. We are to have faith in someone, in something. Of course, our faith is to be directed toward our God. So now the struggle has just magnified for each of us. Not only are we searching for faith, but we are searching to have faith IN GOD. After a summer of war, hatred and loss, the Jewish people are undoubtedly searching. It is through faith that we can perhaps find comfort even in our darkest moments. When people come to me with questions of how to find faith, my answer is not so straightforward. I explain that faith comes when we open our hearts and minds to the possibility of a God who is with us at all times: times of celebration and times of difficulty.

Emunah is the idea that we believe in more than just ourselves, our families and our world. We have faith that God can hold our hands and comfort our souls at the most difficult of times. In Proverbs 24:16, it states that “a righteous man falls down seven times and gets up.” So we should not worry if we question our faith, or sometimes wonder how our God could allow these difficult things to happen in our world. Faith is what enables us to question, to seek, and hopefully to find. During the month of Elul, it is incumbent about us to struggle with our faith. If we are truly to sit in judgment on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, if we are to sincerely ask forgiveness and do teshuvah, repentence, then we must be ready to be in dialogue with our God. When we sit in our sanctuary for these upcoming High Holy Days and recite Baruch Atah Adonai hundreds of times, let us think of the meaning of those three words: Blessed are You, our God. Faith. Emunah. Belief.God. My God. Our God.Answers. Questions. Yearning.Finding.And now let us hear the blast of the Shofar,And let our souls be awakened!